Home movies have finally reached the internet mainstream, not the one you shot at the beach this summer but amateur-produced video clips that complement your products and services.

Technological advances continues to drive market interests; prices make digital camcorders affordable for the masses, computers come out of the box with pre-loaded video viewing capability (and in some cases, creation software for editing and broadcasting your videos as well).

The popularity of video portal websites such as YouTube.com attest to your market's enormous appetite for moving pictures. Your website visitors are ready but can you deliver?

Thirty-second clip from Office Moving Systems, Inc. shows how to use Space Gobblers.

Why include videos on your website?

1.To grab attention. Visitors will stop to watch a video of your product before they will slow down enough to read about it. Set your clip to run once automatically (like the one above), run in a continuous loop (be mindful there's an annoyance factor), or give visitors the option to watch it or not. Displaying the gray control strip, which appears underneath the sample clip on this page, allows visitors to view the clip as often as desired. On the control strip, click the arrow pointing to the right to see the Space Gobblers demo again.

2. To prove your product works. Remember, web visitors have a problem they hope you can solve. Enhance your credibility by showing how your product solves a problem.

3. To differentiate yourself in the marketplace. Shoppers want product differences they can easily see. Website videos will separate your company from the internet's competitive gray noise.

What's needed?

Think about your short video as a story with a beginning, middle, and end. Depending on your budget, hire out the production or do it yourself. Shoot the raw footage, connect the camera to the computer and download the raw footage. Edit to tell web visitors your story. Generate a self-contained movie encoded for internet playback. Place it on your web page and upload.